It cannot have escaped the notice of anyone that we are seeing an alarming rise in the use of the word 'existential'. If this malign trend continues much longer, we may soon see the public arena entirely engulfed in piffle, drivel and balderdash. Possibly all three.
10 comments:
It might be an existential threat to our language.
Interesting, though, that we never see an existential encouragement or safeguard. "Devolution could be an existential encouragement to an independent Scotland..."
I like this idea of existential encouragement... If only I can find a way to work it into discussions of public probity, proper policing, low taxation, self responsibility, Brexit... The ideas are endless. Thanks for giving me something to chew over.
I had to look it up, and found that it was just another load of borrocks to give studes doing vegan gender studies courses, so gave up trying to undersand what it meant...
Much happier now!
It's one of the opposites of "essential".
That's literally and existential truth
It's an exponential increase in existential. Which may or may not be better than quantum leap. But relatively speaking it's chaos out there, systemically.
All 'existential' means is that something exists. Applied as a modifier it's a pleonasm, an unnecessary or superfluous word. As it is, this poor innocent word is being wantonly abused. This is heartless and sadistic.
We need to report these abusers to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to English. Then they can be hauled away and beaten harshly by Giant Thesauri with full hardback copies of the OED (All 27 volumes, without having their appendices removed) while forced to eat nothing but Strunk and White.
That'll larn 'em.
Sam - and it doesn't seem to be used for anything desirable, as it it has acquired another meaning similar to 'bad'.
Andrew - just go for it and see if anyone queries it.
Scrobs - yes, it doesn't add much to real life.
Anon - ha - good definition.
Bucko - it is but only in an existential sense... blimey it's as infectious as covid.
dearieme - cripes - so it's existentially worse than we thought.
Bill - and for the professionals, a much lighter physical beating with a P45.
Found today: "Their struggle is conducted with the clarity of existential necessity, but is perceived, through media and stories, by a restless online public trapped in the twilight shadows of post-truth."
dearieme - I think there is something buried in there but I'm not sure what.
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